Part 27 (1/2)

'Cuthbert, we have seen, had no great reason, to spare the Danes, when opportunity offered. Accordingly, I find in Simeon of Durham, that the Saint appeared in a vision to Alfred, when lurking in the marches of Glas...o...b..ry, and promised him a.s.sistance and victory over his heathen enemies; a consolation which, as was reasonable, Alfred, after the battle of Ashendown, rewarded, by a royal offering at the shrine of the Saint. As to William the Conqueror, the terror spread before his army, when he marched to punish the revolt of the Northumbrians, in 1096, had forced the monks to fly once more to Holy Island with the body of the Saint. It was, however, replaced before William left the north; and, to balance accounts, the Conqueror having intimated an indiscreet curiosity to view the Saint's body, he was, while in the act of commanding the shrine to be opened, seized with heat and sickness, accompanied with such a panic terror, that, notwithstanding there was a sumptuous dinner prepared for him, he fled without eating a morsel (which the monkish historian seems to have thought no small part both of the miracle and the penance,) and never drew his bridle till he got to the river Tees.'--SCOTT.

Stanza XVI. line 300. 'Although we do not learn that Cuthbert was, during his life, such an artificer as Dunstan, his brother in sanct.i.ty, yet, since his death, he has acquired the reputation of forging those Entrochi which are found among the rocks of Holy Island, and pa.s.s there by the name of St. Cuthbert's Beads. While at this task, he is supposed to sit during the night upon a certain rock, and use another as his anvil. This story was perhaps credited in former days; at least the Saint's legend contains some not more probable.'--SCOTT.

See in Mr. Aubrey de Vere's 'Legends of the Saxon Saints' a fine poem ent.i.tled 'How Saint Cuthbert kept his Pentecost at Carlisle.'

The 'beads' are there referred to thus:--

'And many an age, when slept that Saint in death, Pa.s.sing his isle by night the sailor heard Saint Cuthbert's hammer clinking on the rock.'

The recognised name of these sh.e.l.ls is still 'St. Cuthbert's beads.”

Stanza XVII. line 316. 'Ceolwolf, or Colwulf, King of Northumberland, flourished in the eighth century. He was a man of some learning; for the venerable Bede dedicates to him his ”Ecclesiastical History.” He abdicated the throne about 738, and retired to Holy Island, where he died in the odour of sanct.i.ty.

Saint as Colwulf was, however, I fear the foundation of the penance- vault does not correspond with his character; for it is recorded among his memorabilia, that, finding the air of the island raw and cold, he indulged the monks, whose rule had hitherto confined them to milk or water, with the comfortable privilege of using wine or ale. If any rigid antiquary insists on this objection, he is welcome to suppose the penance-vault was intended by the founder for the more genial purposes of a cellar.

'These penitential vaults were the Geissel-gewolbe of German convents. In the earlier and more rigid times of monastic discipline, they were sometimes used as a cemetery for the lay benefactor of the convent, whose unsanctified corpses were then seldom permitted to pollute the choir. They also served as places of meeting for the chapter, when measures of uncommon severity were to be adopted. But their most frequent use, as implied by the name, was as places for performing penances, or undergoing punishment.'-- SCOTT.

Stanza XVIII. line 350. 'Antique chandelier.'--SCOTT.

Stanza XIX. line 371. 'That there was an ancient priory at Tynemouth is certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding- sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction of nuns at Tynemouth, in the reign of Henry VIII, is an anachronism. The nunnery of Holy Island is altogether fict.i.tious.

Indeed, St. Cuthbert was unlikely to permit such an establishment; for, notwithstanding his accepting the mortuary gifts above mentioned, and his carrying on a visiting acquaintance with the abbess of Coldingham, he certainly hated the whole female s.e.x; and, in revenge of a slippery trick played to him by an Irish princess, he, after death, inflicted severe penances on such as presumed to approach within a certain distance of his shrine.'--SCOTT.

line 376. ruth (A. S. hreow, pity) in Early and Middle English was used both for 'disaster' and 'pity.' These two shades of meaning are ill.u.s.trated by Spenser in F. Q., Bk. ii. I. Introd. to Canto where Falsehood beguiles the Red Cross Knight, and 'workes him woefull ruth,' and in F. Q. I. v. 9:

'Great RUTH in all the gazers hearts did grow.'

Milton (Lycidas, 163) favours the poetical employment of the word, which modern poets continue to use. Cp. Wordsworth, 'Ode for a General Thanksgiving':--

'a.s.saulting without RUTH The citadels of truth;'

and Tennyson's 'Geraint and Enid,' II. 102:--

'RUTH began to work Against his anger in him, while he watch'd The being he lov'd best in all the world.'

Stanza XX. line 385. doublet, a close-fitting jacket, introduced from France in the fourteenth century, and fas.h.i.+onable in all ranks till the time of Charles II. Cp. As You Like It, ii. 4. 6:--'Doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.'

line 398. Fontevraud, on the Loire, 8 miles from Saumur, had one of the richest abbeys in France. It was a retreat for penitents of both s.e.xes, and presided over by an abbess. 'The old monastic buildings and courtyards, surrounded by walls, and covering from 40 to 50 acres, now form one of the larger prisons of France, in which about 2000 men and boys are confined, and kept at industrial occupations.'

See Chambers's 'Encyclopaedia,' s. v., and Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, 2d. S, I. 104.

Stanza XXI. line 408. but = except that. Cp. Tempest, i. 2. 414:--

'And, but he's something stain'd With grief that's beauty's canker, thou might'st call him A goodly person.'

line 414. Byron, writing to Murray on 3 Feb., 1816, expresses his belief that he has unwittingly imitated this pa.s.sage in 'Parisina.'

'I had,' he says, 'completed the story on the pa.s.sage from Gibbon, which indeed leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon me not very comfortably.' Byron is quite right in his a.s.sertion that, if he had taken this striking description of Constance as a model for his Parisina, he would have been attempting 'to imitate that which is inimitable.' See 'Parisina,' st. xiv:--

'She stood, I said, all pale and still, The living cause of Hugo's ill.'

Stanza XXII. line 415. a sordid soul, &c. For such a character in the drama see Lightborn in Marlowe's Edward II, and those trusty agents in Richard III, whose avowed hardness of heart drew from Gloucester the appreciative remark:--

'Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears.'